Originally Posted by
turmeric
The way I understand it mate, when we are talking NZ stocks, is that the brokering firm whether it be a DIY online broker like Direct Broking or one of the big brokering houses, only facilitates trades, they do not hold your portfolio. Your actual holdings are with a share registry which in NZ is either computershare or link market services. No matter who brokers your trades your holdings end up with with one of the registries. Therefore in answer to your first question, no, you will not have to hand over your portfolio if you decide to use one of the brokers to get involved in an IPO. Hopefully someone will correct me if I have gotten this wrong though.
In terms of being a small player trying to participate in an IPO, it seems to depend on how big an allocation a broker has. My understanding is they will look after their bigger clients first. E.g. for the SLI IPO I talked to Craigs who I use occasionally and they said "The float has been oversubscribed and I only have stock available for my managed portfolio clients. Even then it’s very limited. You will need to access it via the secondary market on listing. " I'm not sure what the deal is with Wynard, sounded like there wasn't going to be easy for a small player to get involved in though. Best thing would be to give one of them a call and see.